BlizzCon 2016 World of Warcraft: What’s Next Panel Transcript

Patch 7.2: Tomb of Sargeras Content

Hazzikostas: 7.2 is the Tomb of Sargeras. In Patch 7.2, we will return to the site of our greatest failure, where Alliance and Horde faltered and broke, and barely escaped with their lives. Where we lost our leaders, in the shadow of the Legion stronghold, and we had to retreat; but we spent the intervening months leveling up, building class orders, recruiting champions, getting artifacts, empowering our artifacts, and it just might be a different story this time around.

Where Horde and Alliance failed, the Class Orders will succeed. Maybe. It’s up to you.

(audience laughs)

All 12 classes working together constitutes the Armies of the Legionfall. While the Alliance and Horde can’t necessarily put aside their differences, the leaders of the class orders can see that manifest destiny in front of them, and understand the consequences, understand the stakes, and what they must do; and so this is the faction that you will work with, that you will be a part of, that you are one of the leaders of, as leader of your class order, as you make your way up the Broken Shore, and find your way to the foot of the Tomb of Sargeras.

Of course, there will be All-New World Quests, both: around the world, and focused in the Broken Shore. We are incredibly happy with how the World Quest system has played out so far. We want to keep doing more with it, and so we see this as an integral part of making content going forward, where we make quests for a place, when we are telling a story in a place, we will make World Quests to complement that story including things like class themes, class-focused World Quests that are set in the Broken Shore quest area.

Now, let’s take a look at what the Broken Shore might look like when you return there today.

A difficult task awaits us at the Broken Shore. Part of accomplishing our objective, part of making our way to the Tomb is going to involve first cleaning the foothold of enemy lands, and fortifying that foothold, building it up, as we strengthen our forces and get ready for that assault. Something that is reminiscent of Patch 2.4, Isle of Quel’danas — for those who remember that. A big part of what we are going to be doing here is actually restoring and building up elven ruins into functional structures that can serve as a staging ground as we press the assault forward.

And actually, rather than just a sequence as we had it in Patch 2.4, here players are going to be actively involved. They are going to have agency in choosing which type of buildings to build to unlock new content, new rewards, and new ways of interacting with the world. When you choose whether you want to build or focus on the Nether Disruptor, or the Command Center, or the Mage Tower, and upgrade and fortify those structures — in the course of doing so, you will be unlocking new World Quests, you would be unlocking your rewards, new vendors, new other kinds of content, world bosses, and whathaveyou in a way that you, the player, control rather than we Blizzard dictating: “OK, this is up this day, and that’s up that day.”

It’s a much more organic way of delivering content and telling the story of an unfolding battle as you find your way up the Broken Shore towards the Tomb. Now… what’s going on at the Tomb, at the Broken Shore? What’s happening back at the tranquil areas of Val’sharah, in the hills of Highmountain and Stormheim, well… the Legion isn’t taking this sitting down. The Legion is striking back.

So Legion Assaults, are very much inspired by our pre-launch invasion event that we had in early August, right before Legion the expansion came out. There, we were defending places like Westfall, and Tanaris. This time around in 7.2, we are going to be defending the zones of the Broken Isles. As the shadow of the Legion falls upon Val’sharah, or upon Azsuna, or upon Stormheim — and we need to help defend our newfound allies: the Dreamweavers, the Highmountain tauren, and fight back the Legion so that we can keep pressing our advantage on the Broken Shore.

This zones are under attack, when they do, this will basically disable all the World Quests currently active on that zone, and the skybox turns dark, and terrifying, all sorts of demons popup, Legion command ships on the skies, a very familiar scene for those who participated in the invasions back in August. This time around we are wrapping it into a World Quest structure. As you arrive on the zone, you will be completing a variety of essentially World Quests to take down Legion lieutenants, to clear out Legion presence from fortified areas.

By the way, those count toward your Emissary, if you have an Emissary up in the zone, so don’t worry about World Quests going away temporarily. Once you have got enough of that, you will unlock a targeted opportunity and be able to strike at the Legion Commander on the ground leading the assault. Again, very similar stuff to what you saw back in August; but then there is an extra step beyond that. Once you fight that assault on the ground, well… there is this massive aereal presence, there is a Legion Cruiser in the skies bombarding and beaming down troops, and you will join a 3-player Scenario — very reminiscent to what we did in Mists of Pandaria, which we haven’t really had a chance to revisit in a while.

You can just jump right in, and that’s how you take the fight up on to the Legion ship up in the skies, take that ship down, and fight them back. There is a separate set of content for each of the zones of the Broken Isles, and when you are questing on the Broken Shore, and suddenly you see a World Quest Invasion popup… well, you better head out there. There are big rewards to be won, and of course, we need to safeguard all of our lands from the Legion.

So now when I say you are going to head out there, well… how are you going to do that?

Tomas Hernandez is owner of Blizzplanet.com since 2003. I post news about World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard Careers, and the Warcraft film.

Blizzplanet is a leading fansite covering news about upcoming Blizzard Entertainment licensed products. I also post previews and reviews. I have interviewed book writers and Blizzard game developers.

I was previously an employee of the OGaming Network (2003), and IncGamers (2008-2010). I was a guest newsposter for GosuGamers (World of Warcraft) a few years ago and for Diablofans.com (formerly Diablo3.com)

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